Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Cook Out Southern 500 Advance | Saturday, September 2, 2023
Ryan Preece, driver of the No. 41 Haas Automation Ford Mustang, spoke to members of the media before NASCAR Cup Series practice and qualifying today about his accident last weekend at Daytona International Speedway.
RYAN PREECE, No. 41 Haas Automation Ford Mustang – WE’RE EXCITED TO SEE YOU STANDING UP. “Yeah, me too. As far as the wreck goes, you guys saw it. I was just joking with Chad Johnston, my crew chief, earlier in the day that day, because we had talked about sprint cars and midgets and if I’d like to do it. I said I would, but I don’t want to go for a flip like they do and go figure. I’m good. I’m OK. I’ve got no broken bones. I’m not sore. I wasn’t sore after it – a little bit of bruising, but nothing too crazy.”
HOW ARE YOUR EYES? “I figured you were gonna ask, so here you go. They aren’t bad. I’m just gonna put an end to it right now because what I want you all to know is racing in general, whether you’re racing a sprint car, a modified or anything, it’s dangerous. There are consequences to everything, but what we do as race car drivers is we respect one another to not put ourselves in positions to be like that. I’m fine. My vision is perfect, everything about it. They don’t hurt. They look bad to you guys, but you look at a 410 driver after some flips and they get this. It’s from spinning in the air, all that, the blood flow, I don’t know. I’m not a doctor and a lot of other people out there aren’t either, so what I can tell you is I went through all the tests. I feel fine. If I didn’t feel fine, I wouldn’t be in this car this weekend, but, obviously, I’m grateful and excited to be here.”
DID THE CRASH FEEL LIKE A SECOND, A YEAR? HOW DID THAT UNFOLD? “I’ve seen interviews from other drivers in the past talking about when you get sideways like that and as you go in the air, it gets real quiet. After experiencing that, that’s 100 percent true. Everything beyond that everything is happening so fast and you’re just flipping through the air. Until that ride stops all you’re thinking about is trying to contain yourself. You tense up and you hope that you’re gonna be OK, which, obviously I am and was. Thank you to everybody at Daytona and the infield care center, the crew that came to me and then as well as the Daytona Med Center for taking care of me.”
DID YOU TAKE THE WINDOW NET DOWN? “The member came and took it completely down, but I can’t speak for a lot of what happened with the netting situation. I see there was a lot of people out there that are putting it in slow-mo and breaking down the video, but the worker did.”
HAVE YOU WATCHED THE VIDEO AND WHAT GOES THROUGH YOUR MIND? “Yeah. I feel like I’m watching a 410 sprint car, or not a wingless sprint car wreck. I saw a lot of comments talking about the under body and creating like a plywood effect. I’m sure that we’re all gonna look at this and work on something to help that if that situation occurs, that they car will not want to take off like it did, but from a safety standpoint, I feel like I’ve kind of been the test dummy, so to speak, with the frontal impact and then the rollover. I’m joking, obviously, but I feel fine and, to be honest with you, I was a lot more sore after the frontal impact than I was this one. I look, from an optics standpoint, worse today than I did after the front impact.”
YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT THE LARSON IMPACT AT DAYTONA? “Yes, correct.”
HAVE YOU SEEN THE CAR? “Not yet. I took it easy. I was lucky enough. I talked to Miesha Tate from MMA about just some of this bruising for you guys because I wanted to clear that up as quick as possible because I felt fine. I didn’t want to feel like there was an optics issue of me showing up here to race this weekend and doing my job and fulfilling my commitment as a race car driver to my team, but as well as my guys in here because that means a lot to me.”
DO YOU WANT TO BE INVOLVED IN THE PROCESS WHEN NASCAR LOOKS AT YOUR CAR AND WHAT’S BEING DONE? “Yeah. I think we all do. As drivers we want to be very involved in the process, so moving forward I’d like to go see the car. I’d like to explain to them what I went through as well as figuring out a way to help keep the car on the ground. I mean, we’ve come so far from the early nineties with the roof flaps and all that stuff.”
DID YOU GET HIT BY JONES AND THEN BRISCOE? IT WAS HARD TO TELL WHAT HAPPENED. “Erik went to push me, give me a bump draft, and with these cars I think I might have been checking up a little bit for the guy in front of me and it just hit me the wrong way and that sent me into Chase, so, from there, when I went across Chase’s front bumper and it turned us at that sideways angle, I don’t necessarily know how the air got under the car – if it was from going from the asphalt to the grass and it was bouncing. We run these cars really rigid to get the most performance out of them that we can and that’s just what we’re gonna do. I’m not saying that’s an issue at all, I’m just saying that whatever happened to allow the air under the car, it made it go up.”
A LOT HAS BEEN MADE ABOUT THE ROOF HITCH COMING UNDONE DURING THE FLIP. CAN ANYTHING BE DONE ABOUT THAT? “I haven’t seen the car, so I can’t really speak on that.”
WHAT ABOUT THE PIROUETTE? “We haven’t seen that in a long time. To be honest with you, that will go into just like years ago when they were able to keep cars on the ground, that will go into them looking at it and figuring out ways to stop that from happening. I don’t know. I’m not an aeronautical engineer by any means, I’m just a race car driver that loves racing, loves competition, loves adrenaline and wants to be here at the racetrack.”
WERE YOU SURPRISED YOU CAME OUT OF THIS AS WELL AS YOU DID? HOW DID YOU FEEL AT THE HOSPITAL? “At 11:30-12:00 I was looking at them saying, ‘Let me go. I’m ready to leave.’ But, I guess so they felt better I decided to stay until 6:00 in the morning, but I felt fine. That’s where we are. A lot of people, the difference between us and most people that would go and drive a car is that this is what we’re supposed to be – we’re supposed to be tough. And it’s OK to be tough. It’s OK to do those things. I feel good. My wife even joked with me on Monday morning and said, ‘You got out of bed quicker than me.’ Me as a person, my father raised me to be the way that I am, how tough I am and how I want to be as a person, so it’s OK to be that way.”
ALL 16 PLAYOFF DRIVERS SAID YOUR ACCIDENT WAS ONE OF THE MOST INTENSE THEY’VE SEEN. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO HAVE THAT KIND OF IMPACT? “I’d rather be a part of history for a better reason, for sure, but at the end of the day, this is a moment for our sport to continue evolving the car, which is important, not that I want to be the one or any of us to be that person to figure out what we need to work on, but it’s gonna help us get in the right direction.”
DID YOU EVER THINK ABOUT NOT RACING THIS WEEK? WHY NOT SIT FOR A WEEK? “No way. Why? I mean, as a racer, why? You go talk to a guy that’s racing a 410 or a modified, we love to race and I feel completely fine, so why stop? I get what you’re saying. It’s OK to not race, but it’s OK to race, and I think that’s what really needs to be said here.”
NO CONCUSSION-LIKE SYMPTOMS? “I have no concussion-like symptoms. If I had headaches or blurry vision or anything like that, that I felt that I’d be endangering myself or anybody here racing, I wouldn’t be racing. I have a family at home that I have to worry about as well. This is my job. This is what I want to do and I feel completely fine to do it.”
DID YOU HUG YOUR WIFE AND DAUGHTER WHEN YOU GOT HOME? “Yeah, I held my daughter for the most part all day Sunday and gave my wife a hug and a kiss. It just goes to show you that sometimes when you think about making moves, and I’m not talking about mine I’m just saying in general, sometimes you’ll see some careless moves and no matter where you’re at racing in the country you’ve got to think about because as safe as we feel we are because of the safety of race cars and how things have evolved, there are still people in those race cars.”
DID YOU HAVE ANY BRUISING FROM THE BELTS? “I didn’t bruise from the belts.”
ANY SAFETY IMPROVEMENTS FROM THE TALLADEGA WRECK THAT WERE IN THIS CAR THAT BENEFITTED YOU IN THIS CRASH? “My crotch belt area didn’t hurt like it did after Kyle Larson and I wrecked at Talladega, so I guess so. But the wreck I had was different. Flipping was completely different, but the cage held up. I don’t think we’ve tested that, nor do I feel like you go through tests to see how that would. You’d just hope that it would and all that stuff was good.”
WHERE DID THE EYE BRUISING COME FROM? “I didn’t get hit in the face with anything. I don’t know. You’d have to ask a sprint car guy on why those things happen. We typically don’t flip that many times.”
WOULD YOU WANT THAT CAR BACK? “I don’t know. I’d rather a car from one day when I win. I don’t like to look at the bad days. The worst part about that day from an organization standpoint at Stewart-Haas is we were all really fast. We had such fast race cars and to not be able to capitalize on a car that I felt like would do everything I wanted it to do is frustrating as a race car driver. I’m more frustrated about that then the flipping.”
HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF THAT WRECK WAS USED IN ADVERTISING AND PROMOTING FUTURE RACES AT DAYTONA? “I think it’s a good opportunity for racechoice.com. They sell a lot of safety equipment, so hopefully this will help that and continue our partnership, but I’ve moved on. I’m ready for Darlington.”
WOULD YOU ADVOCATE FOR TAKING THE GRASS OUT OF THE FRONTSTRETCH AT DAYTONA? “From that standpoint, I’d rely on guys like Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch and guys that have been around a long time. I went through one tumble. I haven’t looked into the video as much as maybe some of those guys have, just because I don’t want to watch it. I’m focused on Darlington today and why continue to look backwards.”
KEVIN SAID HE TALKED TO YOU EVERY DAY. I’M GUESSING THE SUPPORT IN THE GARAGE HAS BEEN GRATIFYING? “Yeah. We race against each other and there are times we definitely want to ring each other’s head off, but we all care. We don’t want to see anybody get hurt.”
Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 17 BuildSubmarines.com Ford Mustang, is coming off a victory last weekend at Daytona International Speedway, his third in the last five races. He stopped by the Darlington Raceway infield media center before practice to talk about the playoffs getting started.
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 BuildSubmarines.com Ford Mustang – “We’ve been working on this one right before Daytona. Ahead of time we were able to basically take our normal Daytona stuff, we haven’t had to change a whole lot of it and know we’ve had fast Mustangs when we’ve gone to those racetracks, so we were able to start looking ahead to Darlington already and realize that this is track where I really love this place. It’s one of my top three favorite racetracks we go to, but I have a lot to learn here still. I’m still trying to be better when we come down here. Brad has been very good and been studying a lot of what he does here as well. He was very fast in qualifying and in the race earlier in the spring, so just trying to get ahead of that and trying to get ready for track conditions. It’ a nice weekend. I surely appreciate it after some of the hot ones we’ve had over the summer. This is gonna be a long race. We’ve got a lot to figure out in a very short practice when we come down here, but I feel like we’re in a good place. We’ve got a lot of momentum and a lot of things we’ve been able to improve from the RFK side since we were here in the spring, and certainly very optimistic about coming in here today.”
DID YOU CHANGE YOUR ROUTINE AT ALL THIS WEEK? “No. Pretty much business as usual. I guess with the exception of our media day down in Charlotte that would be the biggest change in my schedule is I went somewhere where civilization exists. That was about it. For the most part, we’re all systems go. The approach we tried to take pretty much all season long is we’re going to the racetrack to try and figure out how to win that race. Yeah, there is always a bigger picture in play, but understanding and just the way I’ve looked at this for my entire career is all the point stuff, all of that comes with winning races and running well and trying to win races, understanding that you can’t take excessive risks in times where it may not be intelligent to do so. But, no, we’re doing the same things. We’re working off of the same baselines that we’ve been able to establish this season at a lot of different styles of racetracks. It hasn’t really put too much of a curveball in our trajectory for what we’ve been looking at for the week.”
ARE PEOPLE STARTING TO RECOGNIZE YOU MORE WHERE YOU LIVE BECAUSE YOU’RE OUT IN THE COUNTRY? “Everyone still wants to see Charlie, not me, but I will say that somehow or another I’ve gotten recognized more in our little area than I ever have anywhere else, which is cool because I’ve been able to make some really good friends out our way and kind of stay in that small little community, but I guess it’s not quite as subtle now when we have balloons tied to our mailbox after race wins. We’ve got all this stuff hanging out there and we had some people come trying to build a shop and have been for a year and try to do a lot myself, which really slows me down, but, in the process, we just happened to have all of those balloons tied on when we had someone come in to do some work. They were like, ‘Whose birthday is it?’ And I was like, ‘No, no, no birthdays, just celebrating a little bit.’ It turned into celebrating what and then you sit there trying to explain. This didn’t make sense, this building out here on a farm. It is fun out there. We’ve met some really good people. It’s a small world and I’m certainly learning that. A lot of people in racing some way, shape or form. There are a lot of drag racers around us and have been meeting a lot of those people in the last several years. It’s fun being out that way.”
IS EVERYBODY STILL SHARING THINGS WITHIN THE FORD TEAMS OR HAS IT BEEN SCALED BACK? “It’s probably a little bit over my head in what I know about how much is shared. I know that the Ford teams are still having weekly meetings that everybody is on and everybody talks about our weekends. I do know that is still happening. I don’t know if it’s changed from what I get through the recaps. It doesn’t look like it’s all of a sudden gotten really short or everybody is just three sentences and done. It still looks the same to me, but that’s kind of my 100 foot view. I’m not in the trenches enough to know if that would be a safe assumption or not. I’d like to think not. I’d like to think that we’re all still trying to find that high tide and help all of us, but, at the same time, selfishly, we need to focus on our own program, too. I don’t have the right answer for you, but just from the limited amount that I see during the week, I don’t believe so. Somebody else may give you a completely different answer and call me a liar or call me out for making assumptions, but I think we’re still working together trying to make this better for all of us.”
HOW CRITICAL IS IT TO COME OFF THE TRUCK GOOD HERE AND WHAT DO YOU LOOK FOR IN THAT SHORT PRACTICE SESSION? “We’ll go out there and hopefully we’ll get 35 or 40 miles of practice in. Is that realistic – twentysomething laps if you run it out. I guess that’s our hope is that we take our first lap on track and feel like we’re in a decent place with our Build Subs Mustang. If that gets us in a spot where we can run it out, we’ll try and make what would be considered a long run for us in practice. We’re in a good spot being in group two because it is most similar track conditions to a race after having hopefully as much rubber put down as possible in that first group ahead of us, so that part is good, but you’re not getting a true long run feel. You’re just trying to gauge where it’s heading, so that’s our hope. It’s very important to be good so that we can try to get those laps in so that we’re not trying to come in and make two changes in a 20-minute practice, which ultimately gets you maybe 12 laps. If you’re hustling that bad, it will throw a wrench in your practice real quick, and then you won’t know where you’re heading on the long run side of things. That’s our hope is that we can get on track and run this thing out for that 20 minutes start to finish.”
HOW INVOLVED IS JACK DAY-TO-DAY AT THE SHOP AND CAN YOU GAUGE HIS REACTION TO THIS RECENT SUCCESS? “I can definitely gauge his reaction. He’s surely been in really good spirits. It’s been fun really this whole year to see Jack around a lot and picking fun at everybody and enjoying what we’ve got going on. It’s refreshing. It’s been a hard road for a long time and kind of think it’s cool to see that coming back out. He’s still at the track quite a bit on the year. It’s just recently gotten to the point where he’s not at the track every single race. It wasn’t maybe two or three years ago where he never missed a race, so he’s maybe not here quite as often as normal, but we still see him at the shop during the week and are able to have those quick conversations and talk about what we’ve done right and also what we can do better. He’s not one to get too caught up in only the bright side of things and forget that there’s still work to be done. It is constantly, ‘what do we need to do to make sure that we can keep this going forward and what can we do to make sure that we’re competitors in the playoffs.’ We’re just in a better mindset with those conversations now when you have a direction and when you have an idea. It’s hard to ask what we need to be better when we don’t know. We’ve been hunting for that for a long time and now that we feel like we have a direction to go in, it makes those conversations a lot more pleasant.”
CAN YOU COMPARE WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE IN THE PLAYOFF BUBBLE VERSUS NOT? “So far, I would say making the playoffs our rookie season with Front Row as huge. That was so much fun to do that and to have that upset, but sitting here at that moment in 2016 we knew we were in a pretty big underdog situation and were just happy to be there. It’s a little bit different this time around because we’re competitors. We have a really good shot to do big things here and we don’t feel like we’re in an underdog situation. It’s certainly a pretty big departure from what the feeling was back then. I’m supposed to know more now. That was seven years ago. I’m supposed to be better at this by this point and in a better place to make a run at this thing, but the biggest change being in the playoffs and being locked in the playoffs this year was honestly Daytona and going into a superspeedway race that you know can be so wild and not having the stresses of that race being your last shot. That Hail Mary of trying to get in. That made that race a whole lot more enjoyable, which enabled us to go about it a little differently, which made the end result a whole lot more enjoyable as well.”
HOW DO YOU APPROACH THIS FIRST ROUND? “Not a whole lot different. It’s very similar to last year, honestly, is try to figure out how to make these as good as possible. Try to not let what happened last year and part in our doing, is not let non-playoff drivers rack up wins and make it stressful for everybody in the playoffs. We have some good tracks here. Like I said, I love this racetrack. Statistically, it’s not my strongest out of the three that we’re heading into, but I do love this place and have been good at times. I’m just trying to study and learn more about this place. We go to Kansas and Bristol, obviously coming off the win there last season was a good way to give us a lot of high hopes going in, but you don’t want to be in a situation much like Daytona being a cutoff race. You don’t want to have to go into Bristol saying we have to win this thing to move on. You surely want to have more consistency leading up to that, hopefully a win leading up to that to where you’re not trying to use that elimination race as your Hail Mary again. It just puts you in a really tough spot, so we’re not gonna change a whole lot with what we’re doing. Like I said, we’ve been doing good things. We’ve been very consistent all year long. We’ve been very close to wins a lot throughout the beginning of the season and been able to capitalize and execute really well when we’ve had very good opportunities ahead of us as of late, but I think we’re gonna just stick with that and see what we can do knowing those things and take both of our cars and keep moving forward.”
